Whether expatriates or tourists, few have come to Italy and not wondered at some point about the country’s wasted potential. With its enviable climate, historic culture, creative people, and key role in the European Union, why is Italy repeatedly perceived as falling short of fulfilling its considerable national potential? Roger Abravanel, a former consultant for multinational McKinsey & Company who came to Milan in 1968 … Continue reading Demerits

In love with Italy and its happy-go-lucky natives, good food, beautiful monuments and art? See “Videocracy.” And weep. Produced by 32-year-old Erik Gandini, an Italian filmmaker who lives in Sweden, the documentary won top honors in its category at the Toronto Film Festival. How it fared in Italy is another matter. The film, which focuses on the country’s obsession with TV and Prime Minster Silvio … Continue reading Videocracy

Universally described as “winsome,” “witty” or “like Wodehouse,” Tad Friend’s book instead brought to mind a scene in the BBC’s dramatization of the John Le Carrè books in which Alec Guinness plays spy George Smiley. Stepping in to a younger colleague’s flashy red sports car, Smiley/Guinness says “What an appalling little car!” What an appalling little book. If it is wit, it is the college … Continue reading Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor

In a recent article in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, columnist Ernesto Galli della Loggia encouraged legislative changes that would streamline Italy’s naturalization procedures. As part of a proposed law, the citizenship process could take five years instead of the current 10, so long as adult applicants proved a working knowledge of Italian and of “civil life in Italy and the constitution.” At the same … Continue reading Quiz Show

How does Nick Hornby do it? Take a pretentious blogger geek, an almost-famous, now forgotten rock star with children scattered across two continents, a depressed seaside British town and a woman who has a weakness for the first two and make you love them all. The slacker theme, the mature-talking six year-old and the music geek we have seen before in “High Fidelity” and “About … Continue reading Juliet, Naked

What could be more interesting to the foreign and Italian press than photos of an aroused former Czech politician? Or naughty tapes and party photos of a ruling prime minister of a G8 country? Apparently not much. Certainly not the recent conviction of British lawyer David Mills for giving false evidence on behalf of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in separate corruption trials, a ruling that … Continue reading Dirty Getaway

The post-Berlin Wall era sometimes makes it difficult to fathom the furor of communism, both the passion of its creators and determination of its enemies. In an over-privileged and developed world in which the social order is reduced to brand choices, the cruelty of the proletarian-bourgeois divide is unimaginable. Reading János Székely’s hard-to-get book can change that. It can make you want to storm the … Continue reading Temptation

Back in 2005, Steven Johnson’s book “Everything Bad is Good for You” challenged the idea that ingredients of popular culture such as video games and television dulled our minds and corrupted our youth. For Johnson, games that require rapid decision-making and TV shows with complex storylines and lots of characters helped sharpen intelligence in the way sophisticted novels have failed to do. That’s not all. … Continue reading Awesome Ravioli

Those who have met me know I can and will talk about anything — loudly, too much and in public. The trait finally earned me a speaking engagement at a book presentation for Renzo Armani’s witty and ironic “Coppie in bilico.” Armani, who survived an unpleasant divorce, is an acquired cousin’s compagno. I usually dislike book presentations, but when the subject is relationships I’m all in. … Continue reading Divorce, Italian Style

I first met the man whom the poet and Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky calls “the best English author living today” in the mid-1990s, thanks to two nonfiction books he wrote on Italian life “Italian Neighbors” and “An Italian Education.” Still landmarks of delightful but unromantic writing about the “real Italy,” these have been since joined by 15 novels, a book-length account of the ups and … Continue reading Tim Parks